Med comms ‘needs to be more transparent’
pharmafile | April 6, 2009 | News story | Medical Communications | Liberation
There needs to be greater transparency in medical communications if negative views of the pharma sector are to be countered, according to PR stalwart Cherry Wood.
Wood, who founded of Athena Medical PR, has set up a new healthcare comms agency called Liberation.
Commenting on the current state of med comms she said: "We need to change the way we think."
"As an industry, we should go to people who are most critical of the industry and work with them instead of being frightened of them," she added.
Wood said that as pharma companies consolidated they needed to consider how they engage with various audiences.
"We are at a massive tipping point and have been coming to it for several years," she continued. "The industry needs to be a lot more transparent in the way it behaves, its language."
"The NHS has changed a great deal in the last few years and the industry perhaps hasn't changed so quickly.
"There is a lot more concentration on secondary care, whereas traditionally probably primary care has been the focus."
"We work in a really innovative industry and need to be bolder about saying so," she concluded.
Based in Chiswick, West London, Liberation's staff numbers just two at present – Wood and her former Athena colleague Rachel Hind, who joined the new outfit as senior consultant.
But two more staff are expected to join shortly, Wood said.
The agency bills itself as a "breath of fresh air". Wood explained: "We're a small agency, we're more agile, we can move a bit quicker."
While admitting that Liberation's services "would be pretty similar to the offering of a lot of comms agencies", she said her experience in 11 years of setting up and running Athena as managing director would also make a difference.
As well as the pharma sector, Wood said the agency would work across other areas of healthcare, including the NHS and "nutraceuticals".
Liberation has completed a project for Bayer-Schering's hemophilia product Kogenate, which had sales of 848 million euros last year. Other clients include Chiesi and IDIS.
Wood is also putting together the ABPI's London conference on 29 April at which the organisation will put forward its four imperatives: "trust, innovation, value and access". Speakers at the event will include health secretary Alan Johnson.
